


If You Just Realize What I Just Realized

by teenuviel1227



Series: The Rings of Saturn [1]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Co-pilots, DoPil, DoPil Week 2018, M/M, Space!AU, pilot!Dowoon, side-Jaehyungparkian, stealth master! Wonpil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 00:43:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenuviel1227/pseuds/teenuviel1227
Summary: In which Dowoon and Wonpil, former co-pilots for the resistance see each other for the first time in years at the royal wedding--and end up falling for each other again.





	If You Just Realize What I Just Realized

**Author's Note:**

> This is a spin-off of the Jaehyungparkian Week Day4 Space AU but can be read independently of it. :) This is for Day4 Space of DoPil week. :)
> 
> CC/Twt: teenuviel1227
> 
> Please forgive typos; I'll proofread later.

“It looks a little bit weird,” Brian says, tilting his head as he looks at himself in the large mirror. He uses a hand to zoom in and the image in the mirror shifts, showing the part of his collar where the golden Saturnian emblem hooks into the blue Earth emblem that Jae had had made especially for the wedding. “Sweet of him--but I’m not sure having an emblem made for an extinct planet that fucked up the gravitational pull everywhere is helping the case of public opinion.”

From his perch on the far arm chair by the bookshelves, Sungjin lets out a loud laugh. “If Jae cared about public opinion, he wouldn’t be marrying _you.”_

“Touche.” Brian smiles, watching his reflection in the mirror: Saturnian wedding garb is the most stark white he’s ever seen, opalescent, almost. All of the trimmings are burnished gold. It’s beautiful: the collar high, the entire suit cut to fit him. He waves his hand and the image zooms out again--he raises an eyebrow, catching a glimpse of Wonpil in the mirror. He’s sitting on the bed and looking outside the window, quiet, a frown on his face, a crease sitting stubbornly between his brows.

Usually, this would definitely be Wonpil’s kind of thing: an opportunity to make fun of Brian combined with a chance to rave on and on about the finesse of Saturnian weaving. Since the revolution, since they’d triumphed over the empire and Jae had reclaimed his throne, Wonpil had removed himself from stealth operations and steering ships and dedicated himself to the arts and music entirely, heading the new Saturnian Culture Commission and always discovering something new that he loved for its elegance--something they wouldn’t hear the end of. The suit Brian is wearing is fine, woven from the finest and most tensile fabric so that it didn’t just __fit__ , it __moved__  with the wearer, adjusting itself to their frame, the idiosyncrasies of their body. Only one thing--no, one person--could make him pass up an opportunity to lecture him and Sungjin about that and Brian knows __exactly__  who that is.

“He’s arriving tomorrow,” Brian says, not meeting Wonpil’s gaze in the mirror. He undoes the clasp of his coat at the throat, unties the silk cravat, undoes the rest of the buttons.

Sungjin clicks his tongue in annoyance. “Is that still a thing? Are we really going to let that get in the way of the big day?”

Wonpil lets out a sigh, a soft breath as he keeps his eyes trained on the view of the sunset outside the window. “Of course not. Anyway, that whole thing was over more than what, two Saturnian months ago? It’ll be fine. We’re fine.”

“ _ _One__  Saturnian month ago--29.5 years here is one on Earth so if you divide that by--”

“--okay, __mathlete__ , can we not--”

“--you started it.” Brian rolls his eyes. “I know that you’re from Venus and ya’ll are about being logical about __everything__  over there because of your bad Tinder history--”

“--the Battle of Troy might be myth for your people but it’s __history__  for us,” Wonpil interjects, his lecture mode kicking into autopilot. “Thousands upon thousands died because Prince Paris couldn’t put a lid on his feelings. The __Lord__  Hector sacrificed for his brother--”

Brian waves a hand dismissively. “--yeah, yeah. Love and murder and launching a thousand ships. I get it. My point is, I know you’re emotionally constipated, but for god’s sake. When Dowoon comes home, why don’t you just ask him to stay? It’s obviously killing you and it’s killing me to see it kill you--”

“--who are we killing?” Jae asks, bursting into the room.

Brian jumps, runs into the bathroom. “You’re not supposed to see me before the wedding day!”

Jae snorts, sits cross-legged on the bed next to Wonpil. “Unfortunately, I already know what you look like so the entire world is just going to have to deal with it. Also, I have no one to talk to and you hoarded all our friends. So, I heard something about killing--”

“--Dowoonie’s coming home,” Wonpil says, trying to keep his voice level even if the very mention of Dowoon’s name sends a lick of hot fire up his spine. “And these two are worried that I won’t be able to handle it. He’s here for three days. I think I can survive three goddamn days. Anyway, he’s over it. If he’s over it, I’m over it.”

The Saturnian sygil on Jae’s forehead glows a bright amber.

“Oh, Pil--”

“--no fair, Mr. Mind Reader--”

“--I didn’t even have to read your mind to know that. Excuse you, I was scrying __Brian’s__ mind because I wanted to see how he looked in that suit but he’s naked which is even better--”

“--god, Jae--babe, what the fuck--” Brian’s voice erupts from the bathroom. There’s the sound of clothing being rummaged through, drawers and doors being readjusted.

“--awwww, you love me--”

“--I do--” Brian grins as steps out of the bathroom in his regular clothing: bomber jacket over flannel, denim pants.

“--I love when you dress like an Earthling--”

“--anyway,” Wonpil says, getting up off the bed, brushing his hands on the surface of his silk robes. “I’m going to leave you two lovebirds to it and Sungjin to worry about how to get out of here before you two start making out. I’ll be fine. Dowoon will be fine. We’ll all be fine.”

With that, he walks to the door, turns the handle and steps out into the hallway of the palace. As soon as the door glides shut behind him, Wonpil lets out a sigh, leans back against the wall. He puts a hand to his neck, fingering the white-gold chain on which he still wore that precious moonstone that Dowoon had given him on their last night together: it was shaped slightly fusiform, tapering down at one end--a precious gem, a bullet, the one that Dowoon had saved Wonpil from.

_My life is yours._

Wonpil sighs, feeling a rush of feeling at the remembrance of Dowoon’s eyes watching him, the feeling of him being nearby, just within reach to have and told whenever he wanted. He feels tears build up in his eyes as he thinks about tomorrow, thinks about finally seeing him again: the love of his life, his co-pilot, his bestfriend.

 

 

From the moment that they’d met, Wonpil had taken to Dowoon like a hawk to the air--there was just something about him that calmed Wonpil down, made him feel free. For one thing, they were the only two people who’d joined the resistance who were from Venus. Although relatively close to Earth in culture, Venusians shared something that no other people in the galaxy did: their Pact of Logic. It was something stretched across all of the continents of Venus, from Troy to Atlantis, from Olympus to Valhalla.

_Air over water, water as with the land and fire._

Whenever in a situation where emotion threatened to overcome logic, choose logic every time: over emotion and passion, sensuality and pride. This was the crux of their being as a world in as much as optimism and humor despite destruction had been Earth’s before it had been overcome by the latter, before the Saturnian raids had rendered their land barren and their water still.

Wonpil had lost his family in the raids--he was on his apprenticeship in intergalactic aviation under the stealth division, had been hovering within the atmosphere when the raids had hit his city. He’d been on a monitor call with his mother, his father, his sister, only a few hours ago--they were having spicy noodles and roasted chicken for dinner, they missed him. His sister had been accepted to the arts college she applied for, her parents had gotten a new dog they couldn’t wait for him to meet. And then the entire continent had been uprooted, lifted up with a giant Saturnian gravity probe and then pancake-dumped into the sea: all of his loved ones, a simple trinket for power. Rage and sadness, anguish and pain had rushed through his veins as he and his fellow Venusians sat in the comms tower on the edge of the atmosphere, watching the footage in stunned silence.

When he’d joined the resistance, he’d held all of that emotion in, had held it over the fire of his desire to be good, to embody what it meant to be one of his people: one of the Venusians who were now so few in number. He’d headed stealth, had shared his knowledge in piloting. And even when he’d made friends: with Brian, the fiery, impetuous captain from Earth, and with Sungjin, the Mercurian whose gift for strategy and level-headedness he envied, he’d narrated his story without so much as letting his voice waver. He didn’t shed a single tear, didn’t let any gaps in his armor show. Kim Wonpil, master of strength and logic, a pilot with a steady hand, a sharp-shooter with good aim.

He was so strong, they all kept saying after they heard his story and how he told it--but all he’d wanted was to be weak, to pour himself like putty into the refuge of someone else’s embrace, to be held and let himself cry: cry, cry, cry an entire ocean for everyone he loved, everyone he would never see again.

And then Yoon Dowoon had shown up: the first Venusian that Wonpil had encountered since he ran away from the Royal Aviation fleet, since he refused to join up with the Saturnians who had destroyed their home. He was strong and funny, his voice steady, its rhythm and cadence reminding him of the lush greenery of the alps back home. They were from the same province, their families had suffered the same fate--but Dowoon hadn’t seen it, he’d been an engineer, was off building one of the Venusian colonies on the Mercurian empire when it happened. Wonpil had picked Dowoon out, even then--had asked that they be put in the same room, that he be with one in charge of his training.

It was an enormous relief to be able to speak in their home-tongue, to be able to talk about the things that the took for granted as kids, that they would now miss endlessly: the Olympus games, the used shipwreck races around the Gulf of Dionysus. It felt so good to not have to explain--not have to tell someone what certain expressions meant or why he acted how he acted. Wonpil was himself and Dowoon let him be.

 

 

There was no one big moment of falling in love, theirs a love as Venusian as could be. It happened in the hum-drum of things, the everyday routines of training with their comrades and planning for the next big attack, the next bit of stealth. One moment, they were friends and nothing else--and the next, they were making slow love in their bed every night, were holding each other close, were absolutely in love the way that people on Venus fell in love. No big gestures, only the slow and steady __being there__ , the absolute knowing that whatever this is, they didn’t want it to end.

But if Wonpil had to pick a beginning, if he had to choose a start, he would plot it on the night after they’d busted Jae and Brian out of the Saturnian prison, all of them making it back safely by the skin of their teeth. That night, Wonpil had let himself cry for the first time: all this time, he’d thought that sadness and loss would be his undoing, but as they’d busted that wall open and seen Jae and Brian kissing, as they’d caught the intimacy of Brian leaning his head on Jae’s shoulder, hope had broken all of Wonpil’s defenses. How wonderful was it to know that despite all of the pain, love could bloom? How beautiful was it to think that maybe, just maybe, in all of that adversity, sometimes, the person you loved loved you back with a love so strong it meant being together no matter what?

He’d tried to keep it quiet, had let his tears fall onto his pillow as he and Dowoon lay in their own beds in the darkness of the base, had resisted the urge to sob and heave and cry out loud in their small, cramped room. And then he’d heard the springs in Dowoon’s bed creak, knew that he was turning to face him in the dark.

“Pil?”

No answer.

“I know you’re awake. I can hear you.”

“Just go to bed, Dowoonie.”

A beat of silence.

“You know, it isn’t illogical to cry.”

Wonpil feels the beginnings of a sob build in his throat.

“In fact,” Dowoon says, his voice slow and steady. “Sometimes, crying is the most logical thing in the world. It can help clear your head. Physically, it relieves tension--”

Wonpil lets the sob escape, then, floating out into the space between them like a flock of birds, a many-feathered thing--sadness for his family, grief for his world, longing for the home that he’d lost, and the hope that maybe one day, they could rebuild, the light shining in him that maybe, maybe one day things would be alright again. Through the sound of his sobbing, Wonpil hadn’t heard Dowoon get up, hadn’t heard him cross the space between their beds, had only felt him as he slipped into Wonpil’s bed, bringing an arm around him, holding him close. Wonpil let himself be held, pressed his cheek to Dowoon’s chest.

Wonpil cried and cried and cried until there were no tears left to shed, until every breath was a sigh, until he was docile and soft in Dowoon’s arms.

“Better?” Dowoon had wiped Wonpil’s tears away with the collar of his shirt, had swept his hair off of his forehead where it’d been plastered with sweat from the warm Glisean night.

Wonpil nodded, sleepy now, exhaustion coming over him.

“Thank you, Dowoonie.” Wonpil looked up and into Dowoon’s eyes, his eyes bright in the moonlight drifting in from the small porthole above them. “Do you think we’ll ever find a place to call home again?”

“What am I going to do with you?” Dowoon smiled, bringing a hand to Wonpil’s cheek.

Wonpil laughed softly, his voice hoarse. “What are you talking about?”

“Can’t you see?” Dowoon brushed his nose gently against Wonpil’s. “You __are__  my home.”

A kiss like coming home: warm, sweet, a steady pulse of longing beating under the warmth of skin, the slick touch of tongue against tongue, of lips parting, of bodies asking for more, more, more. They’d fallen asleep in each others’ arms, had gone to bed every night like that since--that is, until the final battle, until the day when everything had changed.

 

 

Today, Wonpil is standing on the airstrip with his friends: Jae and Brian holding hands, Jae with his white cowl shrouding his face from the afternoon sun (Saturnians burn easy), Sungjin pulling the hover carrier behind him to help with Dowoon’s things, and Wonpil, feeling naked, somehow, feeling more vulnerable than he has in a really, really long time despite the fact that he’s wearing his favorite casual outfit: a camel-colored tunic over navy blue pants, the fabric hanging loose off of his slender frame, showing off his collarbones, his shoulders. He’d changed outfits more than five times before settling on this--not that Dowoon, or anyone for that matter, would ever have to know that.

His ship arrives in at the exact time he’d sent in his message--just like him to be on time to the second, Wonpil thinks, his heart fluttering. The ship comes piercing through the amber atmosphere with a twinkle before zooming toward them, circling before shedding momentum and finally hovering, lowering itself onto the bright, magnetized strip. The ramp lowers and out comes Lieutenant Yoon Dowoon, his green bomber jacket still done up, his hair a black mess, his jeans tight and form-fitting, leather boots making a heavy sound on the metal as he bounds down to meet them.

Wonpil feels like his heart is going to leap out of his chest. _How has he gotten even **more** handsome? _

“Welcome back, kid,” Sungjin says, extending his fist for Dowoon to bump.

Dowoon rolls his eyes. “General. I missed you and your very warm way of greeting people.”

Sungjin grins then, ruffling Dowoon’s hair. “You know I mean it.”

Dowoon smiles. “I know.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but--” Brian clears his throat.

Dowoon lets out a laugh, jumps and gives Brian a long, good hug.

“I thought for a hot minute you were going to actually miss our wedding,” Brian says, clapping him on the back.

“Yeah, Dowoonie,” Jae seconds, waving off Dowoon’s attempt at bowing to him and instead joining in on the hug. “Why the hell did it take you so damn long to respond? You were out on the cusp, not inside a black hole right? I sent you the most advanced tracking pod just in case you were hiding out in a hole on a meteor inside a pod docked to a ship docked to a drifting moon or something. I know you’re protecting the galaxy but you don’t have you to go off the damn radar.”

“Sorry,” Dowoon says, grinning as they release him from their embrace. “I was held up--”

“--hah!” Brian says. “Held up my ass. The pod shows when the message is read, you idiot. Five days. It took you five damn days to say whether you were going to come home or not why the hell--oh--”

Dowoon meets Wonpil’s gaze, holds it.

Wonpil nods, feels a part of him melting even now, feels a part of him wanting to yield to Dowoon, wanting to hold him close and never let him go.

Instead, he extends a hand.

“--welcome home.”

Dowoon nods back, taking Wonpil’s hand but instead of shaking, places the softest kiss on the back of it. Wonpil’s heart flutters Dowoon’s touch, the ache of longing making him tremble like a sheet in the wind.

“It’s good to be here.”

 

 

The final battle was a bloody one--half of the resistance already wiped out, all of them exhausting even the reserve ammo, all of them thinking that they might lose. Jae and Brian were in the throne room, battling it out with Jae’s jealous stepbrother, but Dowoon and Wonpil were fighting an even bigger fight: they were on the enemy’s mother ship, The Lobster. They had just finished planting the bomb that would destroy all of Saturn’s ammunition, all of their world-miners and ocean-killers, the technology they had plundered the galaxy with. Now, all that was left was to make it out.

In theory, the plan was simple: run down the chute, get into the escape pod, and head into the castle to help everyone else. They had their guns, they had a couple of darts and grenades that they’d put together. But they hadn’t counted on there being a barrage of people waiting by the escape hatch, hadn’t counted on there being __more__ soldiers dispatched without them noticing--their radar devices had died, being demagnitized in the room where they’d planted the bomb.

The moment was both the fastest and the slowest moment of Wonpil’s life. One second, he and Dowoon were back-to-back, fighting everyone off--Dowoon shooting three soldiers down in a row with a single beam before pulling and catching Wonpil to catapult him up onto the far wall which he scaled, shooting at five, six, seven soldiers before landing as their bodies fell with a thud to the ground. One moment, they’d thought that they were safe, were about to run: and then there was the sound of a voice yelling, and then a blue stone flung through the air, propelled by an ivory dart-thrower--a poisoned moonstone bullet, one of Saturn’s deadliest weapons: guaranteed pain, guaranteed death. Wonpil panicked, found himself standing stone-still as it hurtled toward him: and then, there was Dowoon and his lean frame, Dowoon and his dark, messy hair throwing himself instead of Wonpil, the moonstone catching his shoulder as he he cried out, crumpling at his feet.

The rest of it went by in a blur. Wonpil had picked up his gun, had run toward the assailant and cut him off, pining him to the wall before ending his life, sending a searing beam right through his forehead. Cut-to him trying to wake Dowoon up, cut-to Sungjin yelling at him through the comms, asking for his exact location. Cut-to him and Sungjin hauling Dowoon’s unconscious body onto their escape pod. Cut-to the mother ship exploding behind them. Cut-to Wonpil realizing he was crying in public, realizing they were in the hospital wing of the resistance base, realizing they had won. Realizing he didn’t care--not until Dowoon woke up.

The poisoned bullet had missed Dowoon’s heart by the fraction of an inch, hadn’t hit any bones or major vessels: he was bodily safe, but the question was whether or not he would fully wake up or spend the rest of life in a haze as people shot by poisoned moonstones were bound to do. He was groggy for days, incoherent and confused, his consciousness muddled when he was awake, and restless when he was asleep. For all of the twelve days that he was at the infirmary, Wonpil had stayed by his side, whispering apologies into his ear, making quiet bargains with whatever higher power was up there.

_Please. If you’re out there. Save Dowoonie and I’ll make sure he never gets hurt again. Please._

And so, Dowoon had woken up.

And Wonpil had resigned from the Galaxy Protection core, had told Dowoon they would have to stop being whatever they were. As always, Wonpil was himself--and Dowoon let him be, leaving on a ship that following week.

 

 

Wonpil thinks he should’ve seen it coming from the moment that they said dinner would be at The Oasis. The Oasis was a dining hall that was reserved for romance, traditionally given to the Saturnian King and Queen (well, soon, the King and the Prince Regent) in the days before they bore children. It was dome-shaped in the mimicry of a physical heart, small and intimate with a view of the coast, the sea sparkling in the copper sunset. Today, two seats are set up on the balcony, a small table between them laden with fresh fruit juice, a good helping of the best chicken and vegetables, two glasses of golden wine.

Wonpil lets out a sigh as he realizes what this is--a set-up--and is about to make for the door when not the butler, but one of Jae’s __kingsguard__  blocks his way.

“I’m sorry, Sir. His highness has ordered me to keep you and Lieutenant Yoon in here until the meal is ended.”

Wonpil frowns. “Define __ended?__ Cause I can chuck all of that food off the damn balcony--”

“--he says it’s all that he and Captain Kang want for their wedding.”

Wonpil lets out a groan. “Fuck.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Dowoon says, coming in through the door. Wonpil feels like he’s been kicked in the gut by a bull on steroids: Dowoon is wearing one of his best suits, all-black with a silver clasp at the throat in the shape of a star. The sleeves of his tunic billow, cut-outs showing off the toned terrain of Dowoon’s arms, the tight clasp at his wrist tensing as he moves. “You don’t see me for years and __this__ is how I’m welcomed home.

Wonpil sighs. “No funny business.”

 

 

But the problem is that Dowoon is funny--always, even when things between them are tense, even when their parting hung between them like a rope that no one had pulled on for years: frayed and painful to the touch. He makes jokes, tells hilarious stories althroughout dinner. Each adventure is more exciting than the next: stories of alternating injury and bravado, of thrilling chases and off-beat friends. By the time they get to the wine, by the time they’re watching the night sky from the balcony, pointing out patterns in the stars, Wonpil wants him to stay. Wonpil wants to ask him to stay--not just tonight, not just for the wedding, but forever, for the rest of his life.

Instead, he settles for chiding him.

“You should stop doing such risky things,” Wonpil says, pouring himself a glass of wine before wandering toward the balcony. “You’ll get shot that way.”

“It won’t stop it, you know,” Dowoon says softly, leaning on the railing as a shooting star sails by. His tone is careful, as if gauging what he can and can't say.

Wonpil frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Us not being together. It doesn’t lessen the chances of me being shot again or of one of us dying. All that it does is make sure that we waste even more time being apart.”

Wonpil sighs. “That isn’t the point. The point is that I compromise your logic, your ability to think. What kind of person in their right mind would jump in front of a poisoned moonstone bullet?”

Dowoon raises an eyebrow. “What kind of person _ _freezes__  in front of a moonstone bullet?”

“Exactly,” Wonpil says. “It compromised us both.”

Dowoon shakes his head slightly, taking a sip from his glass of wine. “You were always so bad at that.”

“At what?”

“Drawing proper conclusions from things. You take everything so __literally.__ ”

“Pardon me if death is pretty fucking __literal__.”

Dowoon turns to Wonpil, lets a finger dip softly under Wonpil’s collar, lifting the chain up and out over his shirt. Wonpil’s breath hitches. He hopes Dowoon hasn’t heard--he has.

“The poison bleeds out the first time you know,” Dowoon jokes. “You can’t use this as a talisman against me.”

Wonpil rolls his eyes. “You know fully well that wasn’t the intention.”

“Don’t you think that maybe love can be logical too?” Dowoon asks, releasing the chain.

Wonpil shakes his head. “Hardly ever. Often it’s the person who we don’t want, who we don’t desire who would make a better--”

“--and what about Jae and Brian?” Dowoon asks, a grin playing at the corner of his lips.

“What __about__  Jae and Brian?”

“It’s impractical,” Dowoon shrugs. “Brian isn’t royalty, he isn’t even __from__ here, plus he can’t bear children. If Jae wanted to be practical--I won’t say __logical__  because they aren’t always the same--then he should marry a Saturnian from the remaining noble houses, someone with assets and a following who will help the crowd. And yet can you deny that Jae never thinks as clearly as when Brian is by his side? Can you deny that Brian never flies as keenly as when he’s been with Jae for the past few years? Can you deny that keeping them together is logical in that it brings out the best in both of them?”

Wonpil meets Dowoon’s gaze, the point hitting home, hope beginning to bloom in his heart.

“I don’t want to ask you to stay,” Wonpil whispers softly.

“Then don’t,” Dowoon says, bringing a hand to Wonpil’s waist, brushing their noses softly against each other. “I’ll do it anyway.”

Wonpil studies Dowoon’s eyes: there’s an expression of stubbornness there but under them, a kind of pleading, a question of permission, asking Wonpil to __please__ let him stay. Wonpil wonders if this could happen, if it should happen, if after all of these years he could let himself be happy with Dowoon in his arms, Dowoon in his bed, Dowoon with his soft kisses and gentle voice, his big hugs and warm spirit. Wonpil looks up, sets a hand on Dowoon’s nape and pulls him toward him, sealing the space between them with a kiss. Dowoon tightens his arms around Wonpil’s waist, sighing into the kiss.

“You win,” Wonpil says. “Let’s __try__.”

Dowoon grins, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Wonpil’s ear. “Good. This is what we won the battle for, after all.”

“Love?”

Dowoon shakes his head.

“Home.”

 


End file.
